How can I minimise number of additions? - algorithm

Question

Multiply two numbers without using * operator, and with minimum number of additions
For eg: If input is, 5*8, one of the following ways, can be add the bigger number smaller number of times, and that will be the answer. But how can I minimise the number of additions?

Answer 1

One strategy to minimize reduce the number of additions is to add things hierarchically. This is the same strategy that is used in the classic power algorithm, which follows the same technique for minimizing the number of multiplications.
Let's say you need
M = a * 8 = a + a + a + a + a + a + a + a
Once you calculate m2 = a + a, you can substitute it into the above addition and get
M = m2 + m2 + m2 + m2
Then you can calculate m4 = m2 + m2 and arrive at
M = m4 + m4
So, the result is calculated in 3 additions instead of the original 8. However, adding a value to itself can be replaced by a left-shift by 1 bit (if this is allowed), this greatly reducing the number of additions.
This technique can be elegantly implemented through analyzing the binary representation of one of the multiplicands (exactly as it is typically implemented in the power algorithm). E.g. if you need to calculate a * b you can do it in this fashion
int M = 0;
for (int m = a; b != 0; b >>= 1, m <<= 1)
if ((b & 1) != 0)
M += m;
The total number of additions such implementation will use is the total number of 1 bits in b. It will multiply 5 by 8 in 1 addition.
Note that in order to achieve the lowest the number of additions provided by this strategy, multiplying larger number by smaller number is not necessarily the best idea. E.g. multiplying by 8 uses less additions than multiplying by 5.

Answer 2

A better example will be 5 * 7. This is essentially the binary multiplication using old methods, but with clever choice of the multiplier.
If we can use left-shift and that doesn't count as an addition: choose the number with the smaller number of bits as the multiplier. This will be 5 in this case.
111
x 101
------
111
000x <== This is not an addition, only a left shift
111xx
-------
100011 <== 2 additions totally.
-------
If we cannot use left-shift: note that left shift is the same as doubling / additions. Then we will have to use a slightly different tactic. Since the multiplicand will be shifted the same number of times as the (position of MSB - 1), the number of additions will be the number with the lesser value of (position of MSB - 1) + (number of bits set). In the case of 5 * 8, the values are (3-1) + 2 = 4 and (4-1) = 3 respectively. The lesser is for 8 and hence use that as the multiplier.
101
x 1000
-------
000
000x <== left shift
000xx <== left shift
101xxx <== left shift
--------
101000 <== no addition needed, so 3 additions totally.
--------
The above has three shifts and zero additions.

Answer 3

I like Codor's suggestion of using shifts and having zero additions!
But if you can truly only use additions and no other operations like shifts, logs, subtractions, etc, I believe the minimal number of additions to compute a * b will be:
min{int[log2(a+1)] + numbits(a), int[log2(b+1)] + numbits(b)} - 2
where
numbits(n) is the number of ones in the binary representation of
integer n
For example, numbits(4)=1, numbits(5)=2, etc.
int[x] is the integer part of float x
For example, int[3.9]=3
Now, how did we get there? First look at your original example. You can at least group additions together. E.g.
8+8=16
16+16=32
32+8=40
To generalize this, if you need to multiply a b times by only using additions that used a or the results of additions already computed, you need:
int[log2(b+1)]-1 additions to compute all the 2^n.a intermediate numbers you need.
In your example, int[log2(5+1)]-1 = 2: you need 2 additions to compute 16 and 32
numbits(b)-1 additions to add all intermediate results together, where numbits(b) is the number of ones in the binary representation of b.
In your example, 5 = 2^2 + 2^0 so numbits(5)-1 = 1: you need 1 addition to do 32 + 8
Interestingly, this means that your statement
add the bigger number smaller number of times
is not always the recipe to minimize the number of additions.
For example, if you need to compute 2^9 * (2^9 - 1), you are better off computing additions based on (2^9-1) than on 2^9 even though 2^9 is larger. The fastest approach is:
x = (2^9-1) + (2^9-1)
And then
x = x+x
8 times for a total of 9 additions.
If instead you added 2^9 to itself, you would need 8 additions to get all the 2^k*2^9 first and then an additional 8 additions to add all these numbers together for a total of 16 additions.

Answer 4

suppose a is to be multiplied with b and we are storing the result in res, we add a to res only if b is odd, else keep dividing b by 2 and multiplying a by 2. this is done in a loop till b becomes 0. multiplication and division can be done using bitwise operator.
Let the two given numbers be 'a' and 'b'
1) Initialize result 'res' as 0.
2) Do following while 'b' is greater than 0
a) If 'b' is odd, add 'a' to 'res'
b) Double 'a' and halve 'b'
3) Return 'res'.